Unused vertical space in open frame racks and rack enclosures creates an unrestricted recycling of hot air that causes equipment to heat up unnecessarily. The use of airflow management blanking panels can reduce this problem. This paper explains and quantifies the effects of airflow management blanking panels on cooling system performance.

Rack power of 10 kW per rack or more can result from the deployment of high density information technology equipment such as blade servers. This creates difficult cooling challenges in a data center environment where the industry average rack power consumption is under 2 kW. Five strategies for deploying ultra-high power racks are described, covering

The physical and power infrastructure of data centers and network rooms is typically oversized by more than 100%. Statistics related to oversizing are presented. The costs associated with oversizing are quantified. The fundamental reasons why oversizing occurs are discussed. An architecture and method for avoiding oversizing is described.

Scaling the power capacity of legacy UPS systems leads to hidden costs that may outweigh the very benefit that scalability intends to provide. A scalable UPS system provides a significant benefit to the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of data center and network room physical infrastructure. This paper describes the drawbacks of scaling legacy UPS

Data centre electrical efficiency is rarely planned or managed, with the unfortunate result that most data centres waste substantial amounts. Today it is both possible and prudent to plan, measure and improve data centre efficiency, thereby reducing electrical consumption and improving power densities, so that more IT equipment can be installed in a given site.

Data centre professionals can rid themselves of messy racks, sub-standard under floor air distribution, and cable sprawl with a minimum of heartache and expense. Whether the data centre mess is created over years of mismanagement or whether the cable-choked data centre is inherited, solutions for both quick fixes and longer term evolutionary changes exist.

System planning is the Achilles’ heel of a data centre physical infrastructure project. Planning mistakes can magnify and propagate through later deployment phases, resulting in delays, cost overruns, wasted time and ultimately a compromised system. Much of the trouble can be eliminated by viewing system planning as a data flow model. More inside.

Long-term data centre or network room capacity planning may seem impossible in the face of evolving IT technology and business requirements. Nevertheless, data centre facilities have a lifetime that may span many generations of IT equipment, so planning – or the lack of – can impact the effectiveness of investments. This paper shows a simple

Data centres are routinely and unknowingly missing a great portion of their entitlement from virtualization. Beyond virtualization’s undisputed IT benefits – from reduced rack footprint to disaster recovery – is the parallel story of a substantial benefit from optimising the physical infrastructure that supports it. More in this white paper.